Scientists Use New Engineered Virus to Restore Sight

As someone who is going blind and has a hand full of years left, I'm still not convinced this is a smart idea.

Snip; “Building upon 14 years of research, we have now created a virus that you just inject into the liquid vitreous humor inside the eye and it delivers genes to a very difficult-to-reach population of delicate cells in a way that is surgically non-invasive and safe. It’s a 15-minute procedure, and you can likely go home that day.”

I just see a modified virus that was given the ability to penetrate a cellular wall that otherwise had to be penetrated with a needle, that is quite a little upgrade for the said virus in my opinion.

Snip explaining why they did this; Over the last six years, several teams of scientists have successfully treated people with a rare inherited eye disease by injecting a virus with a normal gene directly into the retina of an eye with a defective gene. Despite the invasive process, the virus with the normal gene was not capable of reaching all the retinal cells that need fixing.

“Sticking a needle through the retina and injecting the engineered virus behind the retina is a risky surgical procedure,” explained Prof David Schaffer of the University of California, Berkeley, senior author of a paper published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

“But doctors have no choice because none of the gene delivery viruses can travel all the way through the back of the eye to reach the photoreceptors – the light sensitive cells that need the therapeutic gene.”

So now they developed this new Virus that's finds it own way through.

pic in link also.

I'm only human, it's my biggest flaw.

We must all realize a sink a chair and a pillow are all luxuries of home and a soldiers helmet takes the place of all three.